


the microcosm between velour and velvet

by scrxbble



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Best Friends, Campaign: Fantasy High (Dimension 20), F/F, Past one-sided Sam Nightingale/Penelope Everpetal, being in love with your best friend 2: electric boogaloo, is it gay to share clothing? i think so, sam during and after penelope, share trauma w me so i know it's real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24032008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrxbble/pseuds/scrxbble
Summary: you’re in love with your best friend. she has pointed ears and she knows all your secrets. you two are joined at the hip because only you two understand each other’s specific brand of growing up. she has done some terrible things. she has done some wonderful things.are you talking about penelope or aelwyn, sam?
Relationships: Aelwen Abernant/Sam Nightingale
Comments: 23
Kudos: 114





	the microcosm between velour and velvet

**Author's Note:**

> title is from zen scientist by milo  
> part two in the summer of sam and aelwyn with a bonus summer of sam and penelope  
> sam is a bicon and that's all i'll say on the subject

Penelope stood in Sam’s room, pulled out a dress from her closet, turned to hold it up to her chest. “Does this color work on me?” she asked. Sam’s answer was always yes, because every color looked good on Penelope, with her elven features and human smile, but she turned anyway to humor her, looking away from dusting blush onto her cheeks.

“Looks good, P,” Sam answered. Better than usual, even, if that was possible: the dark turquoise of the dress was bringing out the gold in Penelope’s hair and the blue woven through her eyes. She tore her eyes away, cursed herself for staring, and kept her gaze on herself in the mirror. She usually liked silver makeup, but Penelope had convinced her tonight to go instead for smoky black to match her the deep crushed velvet of her dress and to line her eyes in gold, and Penelope, as usual in her eternal wisdom, was right.

Penelope appeared in the mirror behind them, running her fingers through her hair and making a face. The turquoise dress sparkled slightly, woven through with silver, and Sam felt like she was going to keel over with- with adoration, jealousy? She didn’t really know what, but Penelope was raising an eyebrow at her in the mirror, and Sam gave her only a smiling half-nod and kept applying bronzer. 

The bed shifted as Penelope knelt next to her and grabbed a lipstick from her back, muted blush over the strawberry chapstick that she had always worn. A single silver fingernail wiped away a stray smear of lipstick and Penelope asked, “So, what is going on with you and Johnny Spells?”

Sam blushed under her powder and grabbed her own lipstick, reddish purple. “He just takes me out for rides sometimes, like to the diner or whatever. We’re just talking, and hanging out at parties, you know.”

“C’mon,” Penelope wheedled, grabbing at Sam’s arm, “tell me everything. He’s so, I don’t know, mysterious.”

Sam laughed and shook her off, leaning in close to the mirror so she could think for a second, away from those eyes that made Sam want to spill all her secrets. “He’s cool, Penelope, he doesn’t even tell me everything. Not like how Dayne needs you to pick out his clothes for him.”

“Hey, Dayne can pick out which jacket to wear. I just always know he’s going to choose his letterman so I plan accordingly.”

“Johnny’s a little more mature than that, P,” Sam said grandly, and felt like a little kid pretending to play a part, bragging about her new boyfriend who was so cool. He was, though, wasn’t he? He was hot, at least, and a good kisser. And he had a motorcycle and bought her alcohol and would punch anyone else who came near her, and wasn’t that something like love? Never mind that he would sometimes raise his voice at her, too, and she hated it when he smoked, and even more when he called her “little mama.” She could overlook that, because she finally had someone to brag about at sleepovers and she finally didn’t have to listen to Penelope’s stories about Dayne isn’t-he-so-stupid-it’s-cute fucking Blade. Not that she minded listening to them, so much, as she minded the way she felt like yelling or crying or breaking glass whenever Penelope mentioned Dayne.

Penelope leaned in close to the mirror, studying her face, searching for anything amiss - not that that ever existed. She wouldn’t - couldn’t - let it. Penelope’s voice dropped down low to ask, sultry and smiling, “How far have you two gone?”

Of course, that question was coming - Penelope and Dayne had been fucking since the summer of sophomore year. Sam was sick of being her innocent little friend to the side, the way she always was when they were kids, one year behind in age and an endless expanse behind in experience. She couldn’t deny that that was a part of why she’d picked Johnny Spells, why she’d let him take her to that first dinner at Krom’s, because she was ready to have her own expert knowledge. But - “No,” Sam said carefully, zipping up her makeup bag. “We’re- taking things slow, I guess.”

Penelope giggled, then. “I can’t believe you’re making Johnny Spells take things slow! You’re such a little prude, Nightingale,” she teased, pinching Sam’s cheek, making it redder with pain and embarrassment under her carefully applied blush.

Sam couldn’t tell her it was Johnny who’d stepped back the first time she tried to do more than kiss him, Johnny who didn’t ever want to come over when her father wasn’t at home, Johnny who’d never even invited her to his house. She wasn’t sure he had a house, necessarily. Still, she knew Penelope wouldn’t even believe her if she tried, so she said, “I guess so,” and stood, smoothing down her hair - she hated how it always floated up. “Ready?”

Penelope pulled on a pair of strappy heels and smiled. “Your car or mine?” she asked.

“Mine,” Sam said, because she knew that Penelope would want to take shots and dance with Dayne, and she knew that Penelope wouldn’t even be coming back with her anyways despite their plans, that Penelope would end up disappearing into Dayne’s bedroom and wake up next to him with her hair mussed and eyeshadow smudged and a killer hangover that Sam knew exactly how to treat and Dayne ignored.

And there was that feeling again, bubbling in the pit of Sam’s stomach, but she ignored it and texted Johnny the address and hoped that he would show up, hoped that she could kiss him and pretend it was someone else.

Two years later, Sam sat at her desk, her reading lamp pointed at her face behind a silver-framed mirror, and trying to choose an eyeshadow when her door bumped open, the sounds of conversation from the living room fading as the door shut. Sam hadn’t let anyone in, but she knew someone who knew the door code and would have gotten trapped with her parents and little sister out in the foyer for a minute or two.

“Help me choose a color?” she asked, listening to Aelwyn drop a bag on her bed and kick off a pair of shoes. Her best friend came up behind her, leaned over her shoulder, and blonde hair blocked Sam’s view as Aelwyn glanced over the three palettes in front of her, at Sam’s shirt, and back to the palettes.

Finally, she stood, sweeping her hair over her shoulder with one hand. “Which one do you like?” she asked instead of answering, pulling a high-necked white top out of her bag.

Sam glanced down again. “Silver? Cause my shit’s white.”

“Sounds like you need to change your diet,” Aelwyn teased, flicking through Sam’s hangers. She ducked as a makeup brush came flying at her and came up laughing. “No, but silver sounds nice. Goes with your hair.”

A hand reached up instinctively to smooth her hair down, but Sam stopped it - she didn’t mind it so much, anymore, especially not after Aelwyn had spent a whole day flattening it and giggling with delight when it bounced back up. She grabbed a brush and a pressed silver eyeshadow and leaned in close to her mirror, glancing up as Aelwyn waved a pair of black denim shorts in front of her.

“Okay if I borrow these? And a belt?”

“Go ahead,” Sam said. “I have a nice starry silver belt on my top shelf that would match.”

She could feel more than see Aelwyn’s beaming smile as she turned back around, tossing the black shorts next to her white top and standing on tiptoe to reach the belt in Sam’s closet. She was humming along to the song on Sam’s crystal, one that she’d wrinkled her nose at when she first heard it - “I don’t like this croony shit, Nightingale,” Aelwyn had said, trying to turn down the radio, but Sam had blocked her hand and made her listen to it three more times before they’d parked. 

“I’m stripping,” Aelwyn called from the closet, turning her back towards Sam as she changed. Sam knew that Aelwyn wasn’t shy, necessarily, but she also knew that Aelwyn hated people seeing the puckered scar that struck across her chest from something that she didn’t like to talk about. Sam averted her eyes back down to her mirror and the thin black line she was painting on her lash line until Aelwyn stepped back out, the Aguefort t-shirt she had borrowed from Adaine in her hand and her hair swept over one shoulder. “Mind getting this clasp?”

The neck of her shirt had two small eye hooks that fastened the halter top over Aelwyn’s bare, tan back. Sam stood and stepped closer to her friend, nearly holding her breath as she hooked the two sides together, readjusting it for a second before pulling Aelwyn’s hair back over it to skim her shoulders. “That good?” she asked, relieved to find her voice stable as ever, then wondering about why she was relieved, because it was just helping Aelwyn, it wasn’t like this was the first time she’d zipped up a skirt or tied a strap for her.

“Perfect,” Aelwyn said, interrupting her thoughts. She ducked back into the closet as Sam finished her eyeliner and grabbed a pair of silver starry earrings from her collection. 

She had bought them a few years ago because they reminded her of a necklace that Penelope had, a single diamond-studded star that hung from an elven chain so thin it was nearly invisible. It looked like the star simply hung in space below Penelope’s collarbones, like the elf could bend reality to her will, _and she could_ , Sam thought as she fastened her earrings. _Or at least she tried to._

“Hey,” Aelwyn said softly, barefoot but otherwise dressed in the closet doorway. “You’re making that face again.”

Sam swallowed her first response, and her second. Aelwyn has a talent for knowing exactly when her thoughts were drifting back to before junior year, before the girl she had known since she was seven became someone she didn’t recognize, before that sleek sorceress’s smile turned villainous in a way that Sam had only ever seen directed at other people. 

“I was friends with her for ten years.” Sam spoke slowly, not avoiding Aelwyn’s eyes on purpose but focusing on the other earring in her hand, a broken constellation cupped in her palm. “Some things are always going to remind me of her, you know?”

Aelwyn nodded, sank down against the wall, hugged her knees to her chest. She had told Sam once that it made her feel safe when she was talking about something vulnerable, having the hard wall behind her to ground her, something Jawbone had recommended. It made Sam’s heart shift slightly every time to watch Aelwyn, who was getting loud and funny and whole again, watch her make herself so small.

“It’s the same with my parents,” Aelwyn admitted, her voice a miniature version of itself. Her toenails were still pink from where they’d painted them a few weekends ago. “Adaine and I are living reminders of them. Sometimes. . .” She glanced up at Sam. Her bangs were getting longer, and they brushed her lashes at their longest, Sam noticed. “Sometimes when Adaine’s upset with me I swear she sounds just like our mother.”

Sam slid off her chair and joined Aelwyn on the ground, the earring still coiled in her hand. “I know I should get rid of the things that remind me of her, but I feel so guilty about it. Or angry, because I shouldn’t have to destroy parts of myself that she ruined.”

Aelwyn’s head dropped to rest on Sam’s shoulder. “It’s hard to get rid of the person who was your life for ten years.”

“Or the people who raised you for eighteen years,” Sam said softly.

“Or that,” Aelwyn said, her murmur turning into something just off from a laugh.

Sam held up the other earring, the stars spinning mobile-like between them. “I bought these because they reminded me of her necklace.”

Aelwyn nodded against Sam’s shoulder. “That star one she had, I remember. I liked her little flower pendant better, though.”

“With the dried flowers?” Another nod, and Sam smiled. “I gave her that one.”

Aelwyn sat back up, finally stretching her legs back out in front of her. “You have good taste, then.”

Sam glanced at Aelwyn, relaxing against the wall finally, and considered how lucky she was to be sitting against her bedroom wall with someone more fucked up than she was. “Apparently I have terrible taste in friends, though,” she said. Aelwyn’s eyes met hers, searching for a way to help until Sam added, “I mean, look at you.”

Aelwyn swatted Sam’s shoulder, fake offended, and boosted herself up, heading for the silver sneakers she had brought. “C’mon, Nightingale. We’ll be late if we keep dawdling.”

Sam stood too, watching Aelwyn perch on her bed and tie her laces, and she kept watching even as Aelwyn looked up, raising an angled eyebrow as her cheeks reddened slightly. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sam said, reaching up to put her other earring in and grabbing her own sandals to sit next to Aelwyn. “Just glad you’re here.”

Aelwyn’s eyes flickered over to Sam’s, soft and quiet in a way that Sam had only seen when her back was up against a wall to bolster her. Her voice went soft again, but there was no wall behind her now, only hands stilling over the laces of her sneakers. “Glad you’re here too, Nightingale.”

Sam shifted her gaze down to the straps of her sandals, fiddling with them so Aelwyn didn’t see her breath catch. Her fingers were trembling as she wove the straps around her ankles, and again she felt that emotion in the pit of her stomach, like she was going to collapse if Aelwyn looked at her.

“Your car or mine?” Aelwyn asked, standing and grabbing a purse.

“Yours,” Sam said, because she knew that Aelwyn didn’t like being stuck somewhere and not being able to leave, and they were both coming back to her house to sleep over at the end of the night, and Aelwyn was a better driver anyways, at least in Sandra Lynn’s car. “Just don’t play that croony shit, yeah?”

Aelwyn met her eyes with a smile bursting at the seams, and Sam felt her chest tighten, and thought, _Shit._


End file.
